Wednesday, July 20, 2016
By Alex Ballingall
GTA men arrested after allegedly attempting to fly from Glasgow to Toronto while under the influence of alcohol. Photo: Flickr
Two pilots from Ontario remain locked up in Scotland for allegedly preparing to fly a passenger jet across the Atlantic while under the influence of alcohol.
Jean-François Perreault, 39, and Imran Zafar Syed, 37, were remanded in custody during a private hearing Tuesday at Paisley Sheriff Court, near Glasgow Airport, Crown Office spokesperson Kevin Bell said in an email. The pilots for Montreal-based Air Transat were arrested Monday as their plane waited to take off from Glasgow to Toronto. The flight was grounded overnight and finally landed at Pearson airport around noon Tuesday.
Each pilot has been charged with threatening or abusive behaviour and performing an aviation function while over the legal alcohol limit. Perreault and Syed made no pleas or declarations during the Tuesday hearing, Bell said. The pilots are expected to appear in court again within eight days.
Air Transat spokesperson Pierre Tessier said in an emailed statement Tuesday evening that Perreault was the plane’s captain and Syed was his co-pilot. The airline is not providing the men with legal representation, and the pilots have been suspended while the company investigates the incident, Tessier said.
“The safety of our crew and passengers is and will always be our top priority, and the recent event in Glasgow goes against the values of our airline,” Tessier said. “We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused our passengers.”
The plane’s weary passengers streamed into the arrivals area at Pearson’s Terminal 3 on Tuesday, as a crush of reporters crowded around some recognizable travellers. Earlier that morning, celebrity decorators Colin McAllister and Justin Ryan had tweeted about the allegedly drunken pilots, including a photo of an audacious headline from the Scottish Sun: “BLOTTO PILOTS.”
The hosts of the TV show “Cabin Pressure” told reporters they are thankful authorities prevented a possible tragedy. Ryan also noted that, when boarding the rescheduled flight, the new, presumably cold sober captain gave an emotional and heartfelt speech over the intercom of the plane to help comfort worried passengers.
“The pilot was fantastic,” Ryan said. “He gave this readily humble speech. He said: ‘Because of the political situation of this, I can’t really comment, but you all have been reading the newspapers this morning. You’ve heard every story in the Scottish media. You’re aware what’s happened. Let me please assure you that I am completely able to fly this flight.’”
Adrian Lebar, who works for eBay in Toronto, was also on the delayed flight. He recalled that, while waiting on the tarmac in Glasgow on Monday, the cabin crew at the front of the plane was acting “cagey.” Then, out the window, he noticed a group of police officers in yellow jackets tramping up a mobile staircase to the cabin of the plane. Moments later, there was an announcement that the plane wouldn’t leave until Tuesday because of “operational issues,” Lebar said.
He didn’t learn that the pilots were arrested until his father-in-law heard the news that night.
“It never occurred to me that the pilots might be drunk,’ he said Tuesday in Toronto. “We probably had the (most sober) pilots in the world today.”
While confirmed boozing-and-flying cases are uncommon — the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents more than 50,000 pilots in North America said in a statement Tuesday that such substance abuse is “extremely rare”—there are high profile examples. The pilots of a grounded America West airlines flight in 2002 were jailed for trying to fly drunk in one widely reported incident. Also, in 2010, Russian prosecutors concluded that pilot drunkenness contributed to a plane crash that killed 88 people two years earlier, the New York Times reported.
Jock Williams, a long-time military pilot and aviation safety expert in Toronto, said the general rule for pilots is there should be at least eight hours between their last drink and takeoff — “bottle to throttle.” Most pilots assume that anything more than a glass or two of wine is pushing it if they fly the next day, he added.
Transport Canada codifies the eight-hour rule, but also has a regulation that outright bans the operation of an aircraft “while under the influence of alcohol” or while using “any drug that impairs the person’s faculties” in a way that could compromise safety.
Williams said there are no mandatory breathalyzers or random sobriety checks in Canada, or most other countries. Instead, pilots self-regulate to ensure there’s no drunk flying of commercial airliners. “It works pretty well. I think the majority of pilots in our country and across the world are pretty good,” he said. “It’s a matter of honour.”
Air Transat runs charter and scheduled flights between Canada and several European and Caribbean destinations.
Chris McComb and Derek McCready, a couple that was visiting Scotland for a vacation, said they weren’t bothered by the delay at all.
“The idea of drunk pilots is pretty scary,” McComb said with a laugh. “But they took great care of us. I’m very thankful they handled this so well.”
But not everybody had their plans go as smooth. Lorne MacDougall came to visit his partner Sarah West in Toronto, and planned to spend the week vacationing in Canada. But the delay forced them to change their plans.
“We are both pretty upset and disappointed,” West said. “Who knew hazards of trans-Atlantic dating involved drunken pilots?”
With files from Jake Kivanc and Laura Beeston